


The First Time They Spoke to Each Other

by clearbluewater



Series: Gigolas Week 2014 [1]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: 5 Things, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Gigolas Week, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Relationship Discussions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-16
Updated: 2014-02-16
Packaged: 2018-01-12 03:31:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1181376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clearbluewater/pseuds/clearbluewater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Legolas's and Gimli's first times having various conversations.</p><p><b>1- The First Time They Spoke to Each Other</b><br/>Legolas is ready to party. The Rivendell elves are boring. Legolas thinks Frodo isn't pretty. Legolas accidentally uses the same insult twice. Elrond makes Legolas sit down and shut up. Frodo saves Legolas from getting a dwarf beating. (Legolas still thinks he isn't pretty.)</p><p><b>2- The First Time They Spoke to Each Other Civilly</b><br/>Legolas and Gimli are accidentally polite to each other. They're not really sure where to head to from there. Literally. They're lost in Lórien together.</p><p><b>3- The First Time They Spoke to Each Other as Friends</b><br/>More walking. Legolas thinks a lot. A hobbit game is played. Even more walking, except this time side by side with a friend.</p><p><b>4- The First Time They Spoke to Each Other of Love</b><br/>Legolas frets over Gimli's injuries and really just wants to pet Gimli's hair. And braid it. But Legolas learns exactly what that means to dwarves.</p><p><b>5- The First Time They Spoke to Each Other of Lust</b><br/>And by lust, I mean marriage. Because elves are weird like that. The merits of following the heart versus the head are discussed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The First Time They Spoke to Each Other

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Day One of Gigolas Week for the prompt "First Times".
> 
>  
> 
> Legolas is ready to party. The Rivendell elves are boring. Legolas thinks Frodo isn't pretty. Legolas accidentally uses the same insult twice. Elrond makes Legolas sit down and shut up. Frodo saves Legolas from getting a dwarf beating. (Legolas still thinks he isn't pretty.)

           Legolas considered it an excellent piece of good fortune that he had arrived just in time for a feast. He had heard that the elves of Imladris were not as inclined to feasts and celebrations as their woodland cousins. He had arrived merely for an errand that Thranduil could have sent anybody for because Legolas had wanted some adventure, but he was being detained for a supposedly important, but likely incredibly dull council.

            Legolas lifted his glass in the toast to whoever this banquet was being held in honor for (someone named Frodo? That didn’t sound like an Elvish name) and downed it in one go. Unfortunately, Lord Elrond’s wine was not as good as Thranduil’s. Or perhaps all the good stuff was at the upper table and Lord Elrond was just being a stingy bastard. Either way, it didn’t matter. Legolas was well on his way to drinking all of it regardless of quality. Well, maybe not all of it. There was still the promise of that odious council, and no doubt Elrond would not take it kindly if Legolas was hung over during it.

            In addition to the wine, the conversation could also use an improvement. Were all the elves in the house of Elrond this exceptionally dull, or had Legolas just drawn an unlucky seating arrangement?

            It appeared it wasn’t just the elves, though. Almost directly across the table from Legolas, an old dwarf was regaling a…Legolas squinted at the creature. Legolas didn’t know what he was. Or if it was a he, really. Legolas hoped that it was, because if not, Legolas feared for its species. Well, maybe not. Orcs seemed to reproduce well enough for being so unspeakably ugly. At least, Legolas presumed that they reproduced. He had never seen a female orc and wasn’t sure if they actually existed, or if there was some other way orcs were brought into the world to blight it. Else how were there always so damn many of them? Anyways, whatever that person was, he was not an orc. He was exceptionally patient, though. That old dwarf had been rambling on for ages now and the snatches that Legolas caught of their conversation were pretty damn boring. There was also a younger dwarf beside the older one who interjected on occasion, and it was on one of those occasions when their eyes accidentally met.

            Weirdly enough, Legolas had this eerie feeling that he had seen the dwarf before. Both of them, actually. But before he could articulate it, the dwarf gruffly asked, “What are you looking at, elf?”

            “I was merely struck at how ugly you are, even for a dwarf. Are you sure you’re not some sort of goblin mutant?” Oh, _that’s_ why the two dwarves seemed so familiar! Damn, Legolas had already used that retort before.

            The two dwarves shot up and started yelling and growling what were probably threats, but they were hardly articulate enough for Legolas to really get what they were saying. It didn’t matter the words, though, all that mattered was the intent. Legolas stood up and was priming himself for the first good fight of the feast before the hair on the back of his neck stood up on end from the combined forces of powerful glares. Legolas looked and found Lord Elrond, Mithrandir, and Glorfindel staring at him like they were trying to set him on fire. Legolas slowly sat back down. The dwarves did not seem pacified by Legolas’s retreat, though.

            It was actually the older dwarf’s conversation partner that managed to ease the tensions. “Glóin, what were you saying about the mining excavation?” he asked. The old dwarf looked from Legolas to the speaker. “And Gimli, weren’t you saying something about the forging of axes?” The young one, Gimli, nodded slowly. “Come! Tell me! I have heard little news from the mountain since Bilbo left, and I fain would hear more!”

             Glóin and Gimli both sat back down after giving wary looks to Legolas as they resumed their conversation with Legolas’s unlikely savior. However, Gimli would pause and glare at Legolas every few minutes. Legolas shrugged and took another sip of his wine. Whatever.


	2. The First Time They Spoke to Each Other Civilly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Legolas and Gimli are accidentally polite to each other. They're not really sure where to head to from there. Literally. They're lost in Lórien together.

            Legolas rounded the corner of a tree and ran into something small and hard. Legolas murmured an Elvish phrase of apology the same time Gimli’s voice said, “Pardon me, I didn’t see you there…” The words died in their throats as they realized who they were apologizing to.  

            They looked at each other in awkward silence for a little while. The singing of the Lórien elves made for strange background music for this encounter.

            “I do believe that this is the first civil conversation we’ve had so far,” Legolas said with a small smile.

            Gimli frowned and looked like he was thinking. “I suppose you’re right,” he mused. “I didn’t know it was you, though.”

            “Nor I you,” Legolas said.

            There was another awkward pause. Legolas opened his mouth and waited for something venomous to roll off his tongue, but his tongue remained stubbornly dry.

            “Where were you headed?” Gimli asked him.

            “Back to our flet,” Legolas said.

            “Our flet is that way,” Gimli said, pointing in the direction he was going.

            “Is it?” Legolas asked, taken aback. He had thought that he was going in the right direction, but of course he hadn’t been completely sure in this foreign wood.

            “I think so,” Gimli said, but there was doubt in his voice as well. “I didn’t see it coming from this direction.”

            “I didn’t see it coming from my direction either,” Legolas said. They pondered this conundrum for a minute.

            “Are there any elves lurking hereabouts that you can ask?” Gimli asked, looking around.

            “Not in the immediate vicinity, no. I can go back and ask for directions, but I should not like to.”

            “Indeed. They’d think you a poor wood elf to get lost in the woods,” Gimli said. His voice was teasing, but it was not the cruel teasing, the thinly veiled abuse that they had heaped on each other before Mithrandir’s death. This sort of teasing was jocular, almost friendly. Legolas decided to return in kind.

            “Indeed! I should bring shame to all of Mirkwood to be lost in Lothlórien! Still, it is not a bad place to be lost in. I feel like I could wander here for an age and never tire of the sights. Perhaps I shall disguise my disorientation as wandering. What is it that Aragorn says? ‘Not all who wander are lost’? I suppose that’s true for a ranger.”

            “If you are intent on wandering, I suppose I shall join you. I am in no hurry to return and this place has a beauty that I had never expected to see from a forest.”

            “Whither shall we wander? Perhaps we shall set off in a new direction?

            “That sounds like a plan,” Gimli said, and they set off in a new direction.

            After a few minutes of strangely comfortable silence, Legolas said, “Since you had come from where I was going, tell me what you saw there.”

            “Hmm. Well, there were an awful lot of trees.”

            “Trees? In a forest? Will wonders never cease?”

            “Oh, hush, elf. You know what I mean.”


	3. The First Time They Spoke to Each Other as Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More walking. Legolas thinks a lot. A hobbit game is played. Even more walking, except this time side by side with a friend.

            Somehow, their wanderings in Lothlórien had become a habit. Legolas would hover over Gimli until Gimli would let out a put-upon sigh. Legolas would go off a little ways, and Gimli would follow. Legolas tried to ignore the pleased feeling that it gave him, a soft curl of warmth in his belly.

            “You are an annoying slip of an elf,” Gimli would say as his heavy dwarf boots crunched over the leaves. Yet he walked beside Legolas regardless.

            “And you are an irritating hunk of dwarf,” Legolas would say, but instead of acerbic it came out fond. Legolas wondered at his traitorous tongue. He wondered at the strange balm that was Gimli’s presence.

            At first Legolas thought that it was merely the peace of the Golden Wood that helped him heal his grief over Mithrandir’s death, but one day he decided to roam through Lórien by himself and it was not the same. He would make a remark and when no answer was forthcoming, he would look down, only to realize that Gimli was not there, that he had not accompanied Legolas today. It was strange that it now seemed the most natural thing in the world for Gimli to walk beside him, yet it had only been a handful of days, a few grains of sand on the beach of his long life. When Legolas examined it closely, it terrified him. How quickly Gimli had insinuated himself into Legolas’s life. When Legolas returned from his solitary walk with these thoughts rolling uneasily in his mind, he resolved to pull away from Gimli, to pull a cool façade over their growing intimacy.

            Yet when he returned to the others, he found the hobbits trying to teach the rest of the Fellowship a hobbit game that involved teams of two. Merry and Pippin were one team, Frodo and Sam another, and Gimli had partnered up with Boromir. Aragorn was sitting on the sidelines, smoking his pipe.

            “Look, you’ve no excuse not to play now Strider,” Merry said, noting Legolas’s arrival. So Legolas and Aragorn became partners, and the hobbits reexplained the rules for Legolas. Legolas wasn’t quite sure that he understood, but he got the hang of it quickly enough. One of the novelties of the game is that under certain conditions one switched partners with the person beside them and the new team’s score was reset to zero. While the hobbits were skillful enough to only have it happen to them twice, and Legolas was sure that it only happened a second time because they wanted their original partners, the other four were forever swapping partners. Legolas noticed a pattern start to emerge. When Legolas and Gimli were on the same team, the two of them played better. When Aragorn and Boromir were on a team, those two played worse. When it was some other permutation of the four of them, they played about average. Still, the game was fun regardless of who Legolas was partnered with. Merry and Pippin ended up winning, and they all agreed that they would play it again sometime. Yet the thought lurked in the back of Legolas’s mind, and everyone else’s as well, Legolas felt sure, that they might never play it again. It was a long game, better suited to idle days of relaxation than days filled with walking towards an uncertain end. They would not have many chances of respite like this, if any, as they continued their quest.

            “Though you’ve already gone on your walk, would you like to accompany me whilst I wander? You have learned the paths of this wood, while I still get hopelessly lost.” Gimli asked after the game.

            Before Legolas had time to think, he had already answered in the affirmative. And was that a smile stretching his face? Why was he slipping so easily into something that might almost be called…camaraderie? after he had resolved to pull away from Gimli?

            “You are distracted. Does something weigh on your mind?” Gimli asked him. Legolas looked down at his…friend? He wondered whether to tell him or not.

            “I take much pleasure from your company,” Legolas blurted out. “More than I ever expected to from a dwarf. More than I’ve expected to from anybody, really.”

            Gimli, far from being offended, chuckled. “And I never thought to take pleasure from the company of an elf either. Much less in an elven wood,” he said, looking up at the towering _mallorn_ trees. “One would almost think that we’re friends now.”

            When had that happened? And why did it feel so right? Why did the phrase “ _mellon nin_ ” come off his tongue easier in regards to Gimli than “ugly dwarf?”

            “Are we?” Legolas asked, suddenly anxious to know.

            “Friends? I suppose so. Unless you’d rather not be, of course.”

            “No…that’s fine. Friends is fine.”

            “Good,” Gimli said with a definitive nod of his head.

            “So. Whither shall we wander today…friend?” 


	4. The First Time They Spoke to Each Other of Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Legolas frets over Gimli's injuries and really just wants to pet Gimli's hair. And braid it. But Legolas learns exactly what that means to dwarves.

            “Let me see it,” Legolas commanded in his most princely tone. Gimli just rolled his eyes.

            “There’s nothing you need to do. The healers have already bandaged it up. In fact, you’d probably be hurting instead of helping.”

            Gimli’s last sentence caused Legolas’s hand to pause midair to where he was reaching for Gimli’s head to examine the wound.

            Gimli’s eyes softened. “I know it looks bad, but head wounds always bleed a lot. Besides, dwarves have strong, thick skulls. Our hardheadedness isn’t just metaphorical, you know.”

            Legolas’s lips quirked up into a smile. “Yet you still wear a helm.”

            “Habit, I suppose. My uncle dropped me on my head as a babe and my father has been adamant about head protection ever since.”

            “Ah! That explains so much!”

            Gimli rolled his eyes at Legolas. Obviously Gimli’s cognitive abilities hadn’t been impaired, but Legolas still itched to touch his friend, to read the words “he is safe” written in Braille on Gimli’s skin. Legolas gently stroked Gimli’s hair, careful to avoid the bandages. Legolas realized that he had never really felt Gimli’s hair before. It was thicker and coarser than Legolas’s own hair, and Legolas didn’t realize that he had been petting it until Gimli asked if he was quite finished. Legolas withdrew his hand, the tips of his ears reddening.

            “Your hair is long overdue for a brushing. Would you allow me?” Legolas asked.

            Gimli frowned. “I suppose,” he said, but it seemed that he said it with some difficulty.

            “Or I could not. If it would bother you,” Legolas said, backpedaling.

            “No. It would not bother me.” But here again was this curious inflection in Gimli’s voice that Legolas had not heard before.

            “I will fetch my brush then,” Legolas said, giving Gimli time to back out if it if he so wished. But Gimli didn’t. He only gave Legolas an unreadable expression, so Legolas went to get his brush. He really did want to brush Gimli’s hair, and if Gimli didn’t expressly forbid it, Legolas would certainly take the opportunity.

            When Legolas returned with the brush, he found Gimli sitting down on a large rock, looking as nervous as if Legolas had offered to scalp him instead of just brush his hair. There was adequate space for Legolas to sit down behind Gimli, their thighs pressing together. Gimli had unbound his hair so that it flowed freely about his face and down his back. Legolas gathered a section of Gimli’s hair and started brushing it. He used his fingers almost more than the brush, touching Gimli as much as possible.

            He was so absorbed in his task that he did not see Aragorn standing a little ways off until Gimli said in an almost defensive manner, “What are you looking at?”

            Aragorn did not reply in words, but the phrase “Really, Legolas?” written all over his face. Legolas made a face at Aragorn that he was glad Gimli couldn’t see. Aragorn rolled his eyes at Legolas.

            Sensing that there was some communication going on that he was not privy to, Gimli tried to twist his head to look up at Legolas, but only succeeded in getting Legolas to accidentally pull his hair.

            “Don’t move your head,” Legolas chided as he ran his fingers over Gimli’s scalp to soothe the hurt. Under the combined force of Legolas’s and Gimli’s glares, Aragorn wandered off the leave them in peace. Legolas didn’t want Aragorn spoiling the moment.

            Legolas took his time brushing Gimli’s hair until it was perfect, but he was loath for this moment to end. “May I braid your hair?” Legolas asked.

            The pain of having his hair pulled did not stop Gimli from snapping his head up to look at Legolas.

            “Never mind,” Legolas said hastily after seeing the look in Gimli’s eyes. Legolas let go of Gimli’s hair, in part because he didn’t want to hurt Gimli and in part because he didn’t feel like he was allowed that privilege anymore.

            “No, I would not mind if you braided my hair. But I would not like for you to do it in ignorance of what it means.”

            Legolas resumed stroking Gimli’s hair softly. “What does it mean?”

            Gimli did not answer right away. He put his hand in Legolas’s free one, rubbing his thumb over Legolas’s knuckles. Legolas’s heart and breath stopped. Though they had pressed far more skin against each other before, nothing had been as shockingly intimate as this was.

            “Braids are very important to dwarves,” Gimli started. Legolas nodded. “You can look at a dwarf and see where their heart lies, who their family is, and their craft. It is a terribly intimate thing to braid a dwarf’s hair and beard, since it is filled with so much meaning. It is usually reserved for close family members…or lovers.”

            Legolas’s hand stilled at the mention of the word “lovers” and he felt lightheaded. “Oh?” he said. But “oh” wasn’t what he meant. Suddenly Legolas was not so fine with the idea of being friends with Gimli. Not when there was another option that involved being able to run his fingers through Gimli’s hair at any time, to shape it in such a way that everyone who saw Gimli would know that Legolas had made a mark on his heart.

            “So yes, you may braid my hair. If you are willing to become my lover.”

            Legolas buried his smile in Gimli’s hair. “You say that as if it were a sacrifice.”

            “I do not know the hearts of elves, or the way that they love. I do not know what you might give up in order to love me.”

            “I do not give up anything that I am unwilling to,” Legolas said, moving his hands from Gimli’s hair to cup his face. “But what of you?”

            “I risk being thought strange. The disapproving glances of my kin. But nothing more serious. When a dwarf loves, it is once, and absolutely, and there is nothing that another dwarf may do to change it. But surely it cannot be the same with you, who are immortal. When I speak to you of love, I speak of love until my death. I should understand if you do not return my love, for any reason.”

            “Oh, Gimli,” Legolas breathed, and pressed a soft, chaste kiss to his lips. “Once I had not understood Arwen’s choice, though I respected her and Aragorn. How could she commit herself to such temporary pleasure, the fleeting sweetness that is a mortal’s love? But I have grown to understand. Love will not be denied, should not be denied, simply because it may end. In all these battles, my life is just as endangered as yours. There is no knowing that it might not be you who mourns over my grave. But the knowledge that I may die would not stop you from loving me, so why should it stop me from loving you?”

            “You’ve thought of this,” Gimli said.

            Legolas smiled. “I have thought of little else for quite some time. Now come, instruct me in the ways of making dwarven braids of love.”

            Gimli showed him, and Legolas bound Gimli’s hair, proclaiming Legolas’s capture of his heart. Then Legolas allowed Gimli to do the same to him, so that anyone who knew the secret code of dwarf braids could be utterly scandalized that a love knot was hanging in an elf’s hair.


	5. The First Time They Spoke to Each Other of Lust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And by lust, I mean marriage. Because elves are weird like that. The merits of following the heart versus the head are discussed.

            “I hate you,” Gimli mumbled when he woke up. Legolas laughed, ignoring the pain the sound sent through his head.  

            “Woe be unto you the moment you tried to outdrink a Mirkwood elf! I was weaned on wine,” Legolas boasted.

            “Dubious childrearing practices aside, you…why aren’t you wearing any clothes?”

            Legolas looked down at himself. Hmm, he wasn’t wearing any clothes. Fancy that. He must have been drunker than he thought last night. He looked back up to Gimli and noticed that Gimli’s face was as red as his hair and he was still looking at Legolas’s nude body. Legolas laughed again. “ _Meleth nin_ , this is not the first time you have seen me naked.”

            “It’s the first time you’ve been naked in a bed with me!” Gimli huffed defensively, tearing his eyes and head away from Legolas.

            Legolas rested his chin on Gimli’s head. “Do you find me displeasing?”

            “No,” Gimli growled, still facing away from Legolas. “I find you _far_ too pleasing, and would not like to test my resolve.”

            “Mmm,” Legolas said. Gimli’s braid was looking quite worse for the wear, so Legolas unbound it and started to rebraid it. “What? Would a consummation of our marriage the morn after Aragorn’s and Arwen’s steal their thunder?”

            “We have not waited decades for our union,” Gimli reminded him. “We haven’t even known each other for a decade. In fact, we haven’t even known each other for a _year_.”

            Legolas’s hands stopped. He recalled the dates and found that Gimli was right. Had he really known Gimli only a handful of months? It was a sobering thought that Legolas was suggesting that he wouldn’t mind if they were wed now and that it was Gimli, who had not watched centuries come and go, who had to show Legolas perspective.

            Legolas’s hands slowly resumed their work. “Yet I find that the shortness of our time together does not change the love I hold for you, nor my desire to wed you.”

            “Hm! I have the hastiest elf in all of Middle-Earth,” Gimli said. “You should spend some time with that Ent.”

            “I have reasons for a hasty marriage. For one, our peoples could do nothing to impede our marriage. I fear that if we return to our homes unwed and declare our intentions, our fathers would forbid it, or talk us out of it. They will seek to fill us with doubt about the truth or wisdom of our love, and I want to have something to hold onto during such trials.”

            “I have been thinking much the same,” Gimli sighed. “But still, I am cautious.” Legolas finished with Gimli’s hair, and Gimli turned around to face him. “You tempt me far too much, and the happiness I would feel were you to be irrevocably mine taunts me. I suppose I am too suspect of any potential for happiness.”

            “No, you do right to be wary. I have not the temper or the patience of most elves, and it is good that there is someone here to show me reason. Yet though I know the potential for error, I find that it has not shaken my resolve.”

            “And I find you weakening mine,” Gimli said. “When you speak, it seems to me that the gulf between us it not so wide, though it be comprised of a forest and an ocean. My mind warns me no, but the rest of my being aches for you.”

            “The mind can lie,” Legolas breathed. “The heart never does. The heart may be foolish, but it never lies. The mind can twist things. It can make you see things that aren’t there, make you ignore things that are. Yet the heart is true and simple.”

            “My heart once despised you,” Gimli pointed out.

            “Ah, not true! Your heart knew nothing of me. It was your mind that despised me. It was your prejudices that closed your heart to me. I was the same, but when I opened my heart to you on the paths of Lórien, we became friends, and later lovers. So think about it, because your mind can offer useful input, but it is fallible, and fearful, and do not trust it completely. Especially in matters of love. I had thought that we became friends too fast, that I had tossed aside the ancient custom of enmity to dwarves too hastily. Yet when I walked with you and talked with you, my heart silenced my mind. Is that not what you speak of? That the sound of my voice removes all the fears that your mind throws at you?”

            “Aye,” Gimli said. He rested a hand on Legolas’s hip. Legolas shifted his body closer to Gimli’s and gave him a long, desirous kiss. Gimli’s hands slipped into his hair, tugging on his braid. When they finally broke away, Legolas let Gimli see how much he wanted him, wanted them, wanted their union, wanted the sex and the marriage.

            “Are you sure?” Gimli breathed.

            “More than anything. It is you who are unsure!”

            “Not anymore,” and with a claiming kiss Gimli set about getting Legolas quite thoroughly wed.


End file.
